If stress had a song it would be screaming. Writing is a hole and I crawl in.

Lily isn’t here tonight and I think of her sitting in a stainless steel kennel just big enough for a dog and doing her best not to trap herself in her own mess that would cling like tar to her fur.

Pretty wisps of tan and black fur like a fine bristled brush across canvas will be plastered to her sides legs paws. I am only guessing.

I warm up the truck and wonder if she is ready for a ride I hope I don’t break down. Reaching out I pet her she is quiet and looks out the window, past my face, out the window again. We pass the house where she had lived before I picked her up.

We ran in the woods before sunrise I fed her good and now I go to drop her off in other people’s care. Please take care of her. Bye bye Lily.

Twenty four hours, the vet had said to me last night, and immediately many things inside my head stood up, arms flailing. Relief was the tallest and had the busiest arms. I don’t like relief this time. He doesn’t signal triumph at the end of one ordeal or hurdle, but gratitude that something will stop, if only briefly, and it feels good for selfish reasons. Bigger than guilt is my urge to welcome it. For one night Lily will be with the vet all day and over night and he will observe.

I know I will go home to my house the way it used to be, a house that is cozy and rustic and calm and all the dogs have their favorite spots. No one is living inside a constantly rattling snow globe where all the pieces of everyday normal stuff are spinning around. Inside the emotions bang in a frenzy against ribs skull eye sockets leaving dents and stupid, stupid stars when I sit up too fast. Lily went off like a bomb in my house and it’s my fault.

Jerry tells me, you’re just doing the right thing.
I leave her at the animal hospital asking, you'll give her something to eat, right? By 3:30 that afternoon I wonder how she is. My sense of humor is dead, which is when gloom’s chilly hand takes away the sun for a sputtering florescent tube.

Everything I do at work includes looking at the clock the phone the clock and finally I grab the phone and call.

How is Lily, I ask.

The doctor is with someone, they tell me; he’ll call back. WHEN?

By the time he calls the sun is already putting on its coat, back turned and waiting in line for the door. I look outside at long shadows stretching toward night and hear the vet say something surprising. She hasn’t gone to the bathroom once!

What? Nope, not once.

He tells me what type of food, what time, how much, and that she liked it. She likes anything, I think, she even liked the small container of clay with the label, Lily Bobowick. Give one scoop twice daily until gone. I know they mean the contents, which is powdered clay, but I imagine Lily evaporating.

At home approaching the house I smell camping campfires marshmallows hints of pure beautiful dense wood burning. Inside Jerry lit a fire and the dogs are in the usual spots where they liked to rest before Lily.

I hate to say it, but I am sort of glad she’s not here for the night, he said.

They told me at 3:30 that she didn’t go to the bathroom at all, I say.

Her diarrhea was horrible and relentless. I had been feeding 48-pound Lily the German shepherd at least three times what I feed our fat 90-pounder and the chubby 75-pound lab. How is it that she has not gained one pound? It’s the same as strapping a sweet potato to her back, but she hasn’t gained even that much.

You know, even if she stops pooping because if pills or clay or whatever, that doesn’t solve the problem, Jerry said. I agree. She can be bound up for days, but it doesn’t mean she’s better. There is a reason that she ate tons for a month and didn’t gain a pound. Thyroid liver pancreas enzyme deficiency or something enflamed? What’s wrong with poor Lily?

A few phone calls give me some pieces of information to add together. Her owner tells me she had a kennel and gladly hopped into it when he asked. She spend most of her time outside. Maybe she learned to hold it and wouldn’t go to the bathroom while she was tucked into her kennel, but that doesn’t mean she did not need to go. Is she sitting there at the hospital now, more than 12 hours later, trying trying trying to hold it? She is a quiet dog and never complains. She would sit silently as the technicians turned out the lights at the day’s end, and closed the door. Some time before morning she won’t be able to squeeze anymore and she will go to the bathroom in her little bitty space and have to sit in it. Would they be upset with her? Again, I am guessing.

Looking around our quiet house and glancing at Lily’s bowl that sits where she left it this morning before we went to the vet, the bowl I step around while I am in the kitchen, the bowl I refuse to move and put away, the bowl I am looking at when I ask, how do you deal with the stress?

Jerry answers, I don’t. I yell at them. Honestly, the most stress is taking Lily out every 20 minutes because I am afraid she’s going to go on the floor, he said.

I just have meltdowns instead and end up hollowed out and uneven and somehow diminished like that candle we left on the hearth, but too close to the fire.

I don’t feel too bad. I could dislike myself just a little for sending Lily on a sleep-over, but I don’t feel that. I don’t see shadows encroaching from the corners carrying buckets of ice water to pour down my spine. I don’t see gauzy fog coming to blur my sight as I cry.

I do normal night things all night and for the whole night without Lily following behind and bumping my legs. I do dishes without stepping on her paw and laundry without a need to glance around the messy nest of clothes in my arms to see if she is in the way. I don’t move through the house with a constant eye toward Lily. Does she need to go out? Is Bandit curling a lip and staring at her? Is Hershey OK? Where did Ozzie go?

I fold towels for the downstairs bathroom and remember my morning shower. I leave the light off and just after 7 am the sun rises, shoots across frozen ground, soaks through the windows, and finds me standing in the hot water. Suds in my hair, eyes closed, I rinse and open them again to watch dim tiles turn vibrant when the light hits. Glancing through the glass shower door I see two dark, bent shapes on the rug. Lily and Hershey. Tails and feet and snouts turned toward one another like a mirror, they rest and wait for me to step out. Hershey licks the warm water from my calves.

Lily. She gives me purpose. She is an answer for the hundreds of times anxiety ran me over and I would ask, what am I doing? What is the point? I tell Jerry how angry I am every Monday when I have failed to change everything so that I am happy. It is not like rearranging furniture, but I keep thinking if I change this and this and this, then I’ll be happy. I resign myself to going through the routing next week, the same as last week, because I don’t have any other plan. Lily has really dragged my lazy attention up from staring at my feet and made me look at something else. Thank you Lily. She has me out of bed early and up late with these words. Thank you Lily. I’ll go downstairs to read and look at her pillow. I’ll be by myself tonight.